


Slow Burn

by emungere



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-11-26
Updated: 2006-11-26
Packaged: 2018-02-27 02:42:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2675951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emungere/pseuds/emungere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a cold night, the fire is fading, and the sutras are made of paper, after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slow Burn

Koumyou travels a lot. People say it's because he's generous with his time and knowledge. If asked, Koumyou would say he doesn't know why. No one has ever asked. 

Dongma Pass is wrapped up in winter, though it's still late summer in the valley below. Koumyou watches the flowers peter out and the leaves blush progressively redder, as if he's caught the mountain in a compromising position. By nightfall, snow tendrils curl around his sandaled feet and melt and fall away. By midnight, he's reached the top of the pass. 

The sky is absolutely black. The stars are unnaturally white, shading to blue and red at the edges of his vision. He feels as if he should be having some sort of revelation, as if it's the thing to do here, at the top of the world. Instead, he's thinking of his inevitable welcome at the next monastery, the hot bath, the offer to replace his worn sandals, the eager faces. He'll be there by morning if he keeps walking, and what else is he going to do? 

Snow creeps over the rocks until it covers the path. It crunches, hisses, retreats like a tide. Koumyou trips over an unexpected rock and stops staring up at the heavenly abyss. Ahead of him is a flicker of light. At first it seems to come from a rock wall, and then he sees that it's a cave. He approaches. 

"That's done it," someone says as Koumyou enters with a lick of icy wind. "Fire's had it." 

Just before the cave flickers to black, Koumyou gets an impression of faces: pointed ears and claws, ragged hair and ragged clothes. 

"I apologize," he says. 

"You didn't make the wind," the same voice says. "Anyone got more kindling?" 

There's a rustle and a mumble of voices, and a light flares. It's warm yellow and not like a star at all. 

"You can burn this," Koumyou says, and starts taking off his robes. It's not as if he needs them to stay warm. 

"Keep your clothes on, dumbass. Your corpse ain't no use to us. What about those?"

He's pointing, Koumyou realizes, at the sutras. 

"Oh," Koumyou says, and something wells up inside him, not unstoppable, but a thing, rather, that he doesn't choose to stop. 

He thinks:  _yes_ , and laughs and laughs as he hands them over. He thinks of the monks and their warm baths, and of his master and his weak heart, and of Goudai's booming voice exhorting his students to kill the Buddha, should they ever meet him. 

"You all right, mister?" the man says. 

Koumyou doesn't answer. He stops laughing when the sutras fail to burn, which is to say, they fail to burn up. Flames rise from them in orange and yellow tipped with white like snow-covered peaks over a late summer valley, but they neither blacken nor shrivel. 

"That's a neat trick."

"Yes," says Koumyou, only slightly disappointed. "Isn't it?" 

He sits, and watches the faces around him, their planes and shadows and the sharp slope of noses, the gentle curve of mouths slightly opened. 

"Is it magic?" someone says. 

"No," Koumyou says. "No, I don't think so. I suppose they just don't burn." 

"You're a priest."

"Yes."

"Are they holy or something?"

"Ye-es," Koumyou says. "And then again, no." 

"Priests never answer questions like that," says the first man. 

"Maybe it's because we don't know the answers."

"Did you know they wouldn't burn?"

"No." 

"Huh. Well." There's a long pause, filled by the crackle and hiss of the fire. There might be words in that hiss. "They're kind of pretty."

It's the last thing anyone says to Koumyou all that night. They're a quiet lot. He's offered dried meat and fruit, and a blanket, and they all sit and watch the sutras blaze away until everything else they fed the fire is grey-white ashes on the cave floor. 

They part at dawn, going down different sides of the mountain. Koumyou brushes ash off the sutras and settles their weight over his shoulders again. They smell of woodsmoke, and they feel oddly lighter. Koumyou himself feels heavier, as if he's been given something to carry away with him.


End file.
